Dark Skies Cumbria
Harness the meteoric rise in stargazing visitors
Dark Skies Cumbria
Research has shown that stargazing activities are a great way to help boost tourism all year round, by extending the visitor season and encouraging overnight stays.
The rising popularity of dark sky tourism enables visitors to explore the Lake District, Cumbria in a new and immersive way. It also fits perfectly with people’s renewed desire to enhance their health and wellbeing, discover the outdoors and get closer to nature.
If you’re an accommodation provider, shout about opportunities to view Cumbria’s dark sky from your doorstep or develop unique stargazing break packages. Many Cumbrian businesses are offering bookable stargazing packages in the winter months. Include telescopes, night-sky maps, waterproof rugs and hot drinks for the ultimate stargazing experience.
We have generated high-profile coverage for recent events and our destination PR and content team continues to use Cumbria’s dark sky as a catalyst to inspire national media interest in the Lake District, Cumbria.
How businesses can get involved:
To help you promote the county as the perfect place to stargaze, the Cumbria Tourism team has developed the following free resources:
- Check out our Dark Skies Cumbria Toolkit packed with helpful information from the benefits dark sky tourism and how your business can benefit, to what to consider when developing and marketing your businesses dark sky offer.
- Complete the self-accreditation scheme to register yourself as a ‘dark skies’ friendly’ business. Once completed, please email campaigns@cumbriatouris.org in order that we can send you the dark sky friendly logo to use in your own marketing.
- Members of Cumbria Tourism can market stargazing packages on the Dark Skies page on visitlakedistrict.com. Please email campaigns@cumbriatourism.org for more details.
- If you are running dark sky events then we can help to promote these on visitlakedistrict.com. The ‘what’s on’ pages are some of the most popular sections for online traffic and it’s easy to submit your future stargazing events for free.
- Members can also access dark sky imagery on Cumbria Tourism’s image library to support your dark sky promotional activity: cumbriamedia.co.uk
Cumbria Dark Skies Festival 2026
Taking place between 23rd October – 20th November 2026, the Cumbria Dark Skies Festival will celebrate the county’s fantastic stargazing opportunities through an exciting calendar of star-studded activities and we are looking for events right across the county to feature in the festival calendar.
Get In Touch
Keep sharing your dark skies activities, events and packages throughout the year on: campaigns@cumbriatourism.org